A longitudinal history of Islamic child custody law, challenging Euro-American exceptionalism to reveal developments that considered the best interests of the child.
The Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law aims to publish peer-reviewed scholarly articles and reviews as well as significant developments in human rights and humanitarian law. It examines international human rights and humanitarian law with a global reach, though its particular focus is on the Asian region. The focused theme of Volume 4 is India and Human Rights.
This book is one of the many Islamic publications distributed by Mustafa Organization throughout the world in different languages with the aim of conveying the message of Islam to the people of the world. Mustafa Organization is a registered Organization that operates and is sustained through collaborative efforts of volunteers in many countries around the world, and it welcomes your involvement and support. Its objectives are numerous, yet its main goal is to spread the truth about the Islamic faith in general and the Shi`a School of Thought in particular due to the latter being misrepresented, misunderstood and its tenets often assaulted by many ignorant folks, Muslims and non-Muslims. Organization's purpose is to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge through a global medium, the Internet, to locations where such resources are not commonly or easily accessible or are resented, resisted and fought!
In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.
A number of Arab states have recently either codified Muslim family law for the first time, or have issued amendments or new laws which significantly impact the statutory rights of women as wives, mothers and daughters. In Women and Muslim Family Laws in Arab States Lynn Welchman examines women's rights in Muslim family laws in Arab states across the Middle East while also surveying the public debates surrounding the issues. The author considers these new laws alongside older statutes to comment on the patterns and dynamics of change both in the texts of the laws, and in the processes through by which they are drafted and issued. She draws on original legal texts and explanatory statements as well as on extensive secondary literature particular to certain states for an insight into practice, and on; interventions by women's rights organizations and other parties to the debate in the press and in advocacy materials. The discussions are set in the contemporary global context that 'internationalises' the domestic and regional debates.The book considers laws in states from the Gulf to North Africa in regard to their approaches to issues of codification processes and issues of and of registration, capacity and guardianship in marriage, polygyny, the marital relationship, divorce and child custody. -- Publisher description.
Is there a basis for human rights in Islam? Beginning with an exploration of what rights are and how the human rights discourse developed, Abdullah Saeed explores the resources that exist within Islamic tradition. He looks at those that are compatible with international human rights law and can be garnered to promote and protect human rights in Muslim-majority states. A number of rights are given specific focus, including the rights of women and children, freedom of expression and religion, as well as jihad and the laws of war. Human Rights and Islam emphasises the need for Muslims to rethink problematic areas of Islamic thought that are difficult to reconcile with contemporary conceptions of human rights.
This book provides a look at Muslim life and institutions forming in North America. It considers the range of Islamic life in North America with its different racial-ethnic and cultural identities, customs, and religious orientations. Issues of acculturation, ethnicity, orthodoxy, and the changing roles of women are brought into focus. The authors provide insight into the lives of recent immigrants who are asking what is Islamically appropriate in a non-Muslim environment. Contrasts are drawn between Sunni and Shi'i groups, and attention is given to the activities of some Sufi organizations. The growing Islamic community among African-American Muslims is examined, including the followers of Warith Deen Muhammed and the sectarians identified with black power, such as the Nation of Islam, Darul Islam, and the Five Percenters. The authors document the challenges and issues that American Muslims face, such as prejudice and racism; pressure from overseas Muslims; dress and education; the influence of Islamic revivalism on the development of the community in this country; and the maintenance of Muslim identity amidst the pressure for assimilation.
In this volume, Brownson sheds new light on Palestinian Muslim women’s agency in shari‘a courts from the British Mandate period to the present. Her extensive archival research on wife-initiated maintenance claims, divorce, and child custody cases deepens our understanding of women’s position in the courts, demonstrating that Muslim women were and are active participants in their legal affairs. Using court registers and interviews, Brownson uncovers a variety of ways women have manipulated the system to their benefit despite its patriarchal bias. She also finds that few reforms were implemented during the Mandate period. The British were uninterested in improving colonized women’s legal status and sought to avoid further antagonizing Palestinians. At the same time, Palestinians wished to uphold the one indigenous institution they still controlled while both British rule and Zionism threatened their nationalist aspirations. Although Palestinian women have had few alternatives to using this male privileged system to redress grievances with their husbands and in-laws, they continue to resist its injustices every day. Brownson finds that women’s understanding of family law fundamentals has enabled some to deftly navigate the system; however, a unified, reformed law reflecting society's current needs is required so women can have full access to their rights.
This book contains selected contributions presented during the workshop “Establishing Filiation: Towards a Social Definition of the Family in Islamic and Middle Eastern Law?”, which was convened in Beirut, Lebanon in November 2017. Filiation is a multifaceted concept in Muslim jurisdictions. Beyond its legal aspect, it encompasses the notion of inclusion and belonging, thereby holding significant social implications. Being the child of someone, carrying one’s father’s name, and inheriting from both parents form important pillars of personal identity. This volume explores filiation (nasab) and alternative forms of a full parent-child relationship in Muslim jurisdictions. Eleven country reports ranging from Morocco to Malaysia examine how maternal and paternal filiation is established – be it by operation of the law, by the parties’ exercise of autonomy, such as acknowledgement, or by scientific means, DNA testing in particular – and how lawmakers, courts, and society at large view and treat children who fall outside those legal structures, especially children born out of wedlock or under dubious circumstances. In a second step, alternative care schemes in place for the protection of parentless children are examined and their potential to recreate a legal parent-child relationship is discussed. In addition to the countr y-specific analyses included in this book, three further contributions explore the subject matter from perspectives of premodern Sunni legal doctrine, premodern Shiite legal doctrine and the private international law regimes of contemporary Arab countries. Finally, a comparative analysis of the themes explored is presented in the synopsis at the end of this volume. The book is aimed at scholars in the fields of Muslim family law and comparative family law and is of high practical relevance to legal practitioners working in the area of international child law. Nadjma Yassari is Leader of the Research Group “Changes in God’s Law: An Inner-Islamic Comparison of Family and Succession Law” at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law while Lena-Maria Möller is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute and a member of the same Research Group. Marie-Claude Najm is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut in Lebanon and Director of the Centre of Legal Studies and Research for the Arab World (CEDROMA).